- Starting a YouTube channel is literally one of the hardest
and most challenging things you will ever do.
And I mean it because you have to learn the technical side
of YouTube when it comes to everything,
including camera settings, camera gear.
If you're an absolute beginner,
this is gonna feel overwhelming and intimidating.
You also have to figure out how to make good content,
audio lighting, all of that.
Grow an audience and then monetize the thing.
Get sponsors, get brand deals.
Make this something that is financially viable.
Now, starting out, this might be a fun hobby.
Maybe you're not trying to be a full-time content creator,
which case, take my advice with a grain of salt.
'cause over here you're on the making
money on YouTube channel.
So what I will tell you is that if you're starting
with zero views, zero subscribers, one of the first
and most important things
that you can do is figure out your content strategy.
And to do that, you need to be very careful.
You have to choose the right audience on YouTube,
and you need to figure out what your goals are
because you could find yourself blowing up on YouTube
and still be broke because you chose a niche
that was very difficult to monetize.
Or you could find yourself making good money on YouTube,
but being frustrated because your growth is stagnating
or you're not getting the views.
Or maybe it's very difficult
or challenging for you to show your value to sponsors
because you can't get views consistently.
That also has to do
with the audience that you picked and niche.
You could be an audience that has really good CPMs
and RPMs on ad revenue,
maybe even it does really good on affiliate links
or people are buying stuff from you,
but then you still feel emotionally drained
because you're passionate about this
and you're not getting the views.
There's a smaller group of people.
They're passionate about the same things that you are.
These are challenges that happen
because of something called total addressable market.
It's called TAM in business.
What does this have to be with being a YouTuber?
This has everything to do with being a YouTuber,
how big the market is for your ideas,
how big the audience is for your ideas, decides
how many people exist
that could click on your video when it shows up in the
YouTube homepage.
If you're making very niche specific content,
let's say you're playing a video game that's in beta,
for example, like Clash Mini.
Clash Mini is not global for a global audience yet.
That probably happens maybe in 2025 if it happens at all.
There's less people to watch that video than
to watch a video about Clash of Clans or Mortal ko
or Street Fighter or Tecan, you know, or Fortnite even.
Okay, so that's one problem.
On the other hand, if you make something
that's really popular and it's in a saturated niche,
then there's a lot of that content spread out.
And then you have to compete
with the top people in the market
that make extremely high quality content.
If you wanna stand out and maybe you don't have the talent
to make a high effort video, an impossible idea,
maybe you don't have the talent to stand out in that way.
Maybe you're not a good thumbnail
- Designer, so maybe you don't have the ability
to stand out visually
and get a better click-through rate and then perform there.
Maybe you're not good at editing storytelling
or being confident on camera
'cause you're an absolute rookie.
So now where are you gonna get the watch time?
Where are you gonna get the retention rate
to have your video perform really well?
So even given the opportunity, there's a lot of things
that can go wrong here
and then maybe you work a full-time job
and you can't be consistent at your uploads
and other people can.
So we have to really kind of address those issues in order
to grow as a content creator on YouTube
or frankly on any platform.
So what's gonna help you?
Like I said, if you're in a position
where you have the talent, skills
or knowledge to make content that other people can't make,
it gives you an advantage, even a saturated niche.
'cause niches are only saturated with low effort content,
low hanging fruit, low value, low quality,
because it's mostly a lot of rookies
and it's also a lot of people who don't have as much time
to put into their content times the big bottleneck.
So where we can make higher effort content is partly the
impossible idea.
Our content can improve in its quality when we're able
to put more time into it.
So maybe if a video has 20, 40, 50, a hundred hours
behind it, maybe that does better than something
that has one or two hours behind it.
Not always, but a lot of the time, maybe
that helps us make something that stands out
and is more of an outlier video in terms of the value
of the video value is packaging books judged
by their cover every time
everyone's judged by their appearance?
Pretty privilege is a thing.
So if we know that, if we know that, hey,
we're judged on appearance, we're judged on looks,
shouldn't we make the best looking thumbnail possible?
So why is it a lot of beginners get frustrated
with why they're not getting views when they're packaging
feels low value?
It feels cheap.
It feels like there wasn't a lot of thought or quality
or care between this.
Most people watch YouTube on their mobile phones.
Why aren't you making thumbnails that are easy to see, easy
to read, and easy to understand at a glance on the phone?
Why is it that I can look at something for two seconds
and go, nah, not gonna watch that.
It's the two second rule.
You have two seconds when someone's scrolling
through their phone to get their attention visually
with a thumbnail, convince them to read a title.
Then they have to know whether that title applies to them.
You're qualifying or disqualifying your audience
on the title.
The title conveys the topic.
The thumbnail and title are working together to do that.
And then there's the such thing as timing.
You can get more views if you are trend jacking
and you're talking about something current
and relevant to the audience that you chose,
the audience avatar that you chose.
So if you're making content for Stay-at-Home moms, the title
and thumbnail has to be packaged for that.
And it has to be a topic and idea that is relevant to them
where they are in their life in that moment.
If it's not, you're out. If
- Your audience is gamers, hey, the game has a new update,
there's new skins for brawl stars, guess what?
If you go ahead and you get on top of an update video,
that's, you know, again, trend jacking,
you have a better chance of getting much more views.
And if the thumbnail and title are good
and you know that market and know that audience very well
and you knew exactly how to appeal to them,
you've won on topic, title, thumbnail
and timing the four Ts.
That is how we convey value upfront.
Then we gotta deliver on
that value in the quality of our video.
And how do we do that?
We do that from our performance on camera,
which is your confidence, charisma, communication skills,
your ability to connect with the audience on camera.
That is your performance as for your personality.
The other P your personality, that's gonna come down
to the structure of your videos,
like having a good intro hook, having good calls to action,
doing storytelling throughout.
Storytelling is the other S in that equation.
And of course it's gonna be your style, the visual
and aesthetic style of how you present and edit.
So it's gonna be that and then it's gonna be production.
So that's gonna be the three PSS for production.
It's gonna be lights, camera, audio.
My friend is going to be the what goes in.
If you've got garbage in, you got garbage out.
So you want good audio, big distraction if you don't.
Good audio when it comes
to YouTube videos is anything from $50
with a DAD microphone.
I'll link to some of my gear in the description for you.
There'll be budget gear and then there'll be high-end stuff.
Could be $50 or it could be $500 with assure SMM seven db.
It just depends on how far you're willing to go
and what your budget allows for.
So that's gonna be good audio,
good lighting could be $100
with like a ring light could be just under a hundred dollars
with $8 ring light.
Probably need to do that video on this.
Six best lights you can buy
for YouTube under a hundred dollars.
Let me know if you want that video and I'll go ahead and try
and get right on that for a Tech Tuesday video for you.
So you're gonna wanna do something like that.
Maybe it's at least a hundred dollars
of lighting could go up to a thousand dollars
of lighting if you want a three light set up
with it being overkill
and you want diffused lighting,
like diffused lighting got darker complexion.
Gotta work on the lighting for that.
So you know, you see where I'm going?
So it could be a hundred, it could
be a thousand on the lighting.
Then there's camera equipment.
Look, you can start with a $500,
something like a Sony ZV one F ultimate vlogging
camera on a budget.
Does all the things, has the requisite flip out scream
that every YouTuber needs selfie mode.
Okay, the other thing you could do is
you could start with what you have.
You start with your smartphone.
There are limitations that come with that.
They're getting better and better every day.
But I think sometimes a dedicated camera makes it easier
to also have the dedicated audio
and to also not have to do overkill with the lighting
to compensate sometimes.
So that's what I would say.
The other thing that plays a role
- When it comes to this is also things like set design.
Set design can be something that contributes to the value
and to the, what would we say, the personality
and the aesthetic of a video that people come to be used to.
So I would tell you that those things matter.
But starting out, try to do the best you can with
what you have, where you are on the budget that exists.
Do not go into debt to try to just make higher
and higher quality content when you're not even good on
camera yet in terms of putting your time into your videos.
Put a lot of time, effort,
and energy into crafting really good ideas.
The idea generation, the topics.
That is a huge deal when it comes to your content strategy.
You also have to make sure those ideas are
aligned to the audience.
A lot of creators don't grow when they're small YouTubers
and new YouTubers because they're making something
for themselves and they don't realize that what you want
to make is not always what the audience wants to watch.
A YouTuber who puts the audience first will grow a YouTuber
who puts their own wants, desires,
and expression first will probably have the
hardest time growing.
It is rare unicorns who get to do that, A lot of people get
to do that later in their career starting out.
You have to earn your respect, you have
to earn trust from the audience
and you do have to do some personal growth as a creator
to be able to have the privilege of making what you want.
That's just how it is.
If you're a hobby creator, not trying
to go full-time, don't worry about it.
Make whatever the hell you want. Have fun.
If you want this to be a full-time job,
you wanna be a full-time YouTuber.
You wanna be a full-time content creator.
Hey, that's called customer service baby.
You put the audience first, you take care
of them, they take care of you.
That's the deal. Make what they want.
You give the people what they want.
Sounds really simple, but it's actually emotionally very
difficult for a lot of people to commit doing
and being consistent at it.
Even me, especially me.
If you can get past that hurdle,
what you wanna do is you wanna keep refining those ideas
and you wanna kind of find buckets of content so
that in the value that you're promising,
your value proposition, the unique value proposition
that you have for your audience of,
Hey, here's what you get from me.
You watch me because dot, dot, dot, you watch me
because I do this or you watch me because I never do that.
That is what you wanna figure out
for your value proposition.
So ultimately what you wanna do once you have
that is then figure out variety within that niche,
variety within that clearly defined audience avatar.
This is your content strategy.
What we do in Awesome Creator Academy is we call this
building your content pillars.
Then you have individual video ideas
for those content pillars.
My content strategy revolves around people usually making
100 videos a year.
Sometimes we can get put that down to 50 videos a year
'cause we're going on an either two video week schedule
for a hundred videos a year
or a one video a week schedule for 50 videos a year.
The way that we usually think
of this is if you're going something like maybe you're doing
reaction education or commentary,
or you're doing something that's more in like,
you know your profession, your career,
you can usually make two videos a week
and these can take you up to five
to 10 hours per video if you're trying
to make the best quality version of this
that balances quality and quantity.
And you can do this even if you have a nine to five job,
because then this means that with 10
to 20 spare hours a week,
you have the time to put in for this.
So that's letting you make two videos a week,
a hundred videos a year, and be able to do that
and be consistent at it.
Now in other cases,
what we'll do is someone either has less time
or they wanna make higher quality content.
We'll go to one video a week
and what we say is make put 10
to 20 hours per video into that.
And so you might've noticed that if we do this either way,
we kind of are optimizing around putting in a thousand hours
in the first year
of doing our content creation in an extreme
where someone wants to make really, really high end stuff,
we say 25 videos a year
and we say put 40 to 50 hours into that.
If you're doing 20 to 25 videos a year,
remember this gets us our thousand hours.
That thousand hours investment is what's really gonna grow
us as a content creator
and ultimately allow us to get our audience growth, allow us
to build our reputation
and allow us to make our income,
our revenue, and make money.
The philosophy here, what I teach in awesome Creator Academy
is reach reputation and revenue.
We make things that can grow us in terms
of reach with our audience.
We do things to build trust in our reputation
and among our audience, our peers and our industry
and with the brands that we work with.
And then we also optimize for revenue
and we try to make revenue that allows us
to have a stress-free, comfortable life
and reinvest back into our audience
and into the quality of our content.
And so that's kind of the overarching philosophy for
how I teach content creation on YouTube,
podcasting and live streaming.
If that's something you ever want, work with me on links
to the description, go to awesome creator academy.com.
Main thing to focus on here is that we need
to focus on building great packaging so we can convey value
that gets us views on topic, title, thumbnail and timing.
Then once we get the promise out there, we have
to deliver on that promise with high quality video
that is performed and produced and edited to get retention
and watch time for our videos.
That's gonna increase our performance overall on YouTube.
And then we have to build a robust content strategy so
that we keep delivering on our promises,
maintain the quality of those videos across our inventory
and library of content so people keep coming back,
binge watching, comment, engaging, subscribing.
Ideally we optimize this for monetization down the road,
you're a beginner, maybe you don't worry about
that as much. And
- Then through the links that people click on, in addition
to watching the videos for the ad revenue,
they're clicking on links, they're doing different things
and then we're generating revenue other ways, whether
that's selling physical
or digital products, whether it's selling a service
of some kind, whether it's working with sponsors,
whether it's affiliate links like
with the Amazon influencer program
or whether it's, you know, like we said,
merchandise, even memberships.
There's all these ways to monetize.
I have an entire series on monetizing
and making more revenue from your YouTube channel,
from your podcast, your live streams,
your content as a whole.
So when we focus properly
and we build systems, we have structure in place
and we build support where we need it later down the road,
we have the ability to go from being zero to hero,
being able to be a new YouTuber that puts themselves on path
to growth, being able to start with zero subscribers,
zero views, and build something meaningful for an audience
that actually cares about us.
The way we do that is we put the audience first
and we do that by being thoughtful.
We choose an audience intentionally where we have the skills
to be able to deliver quality content to that audience.
We're passionate enough
and actually like the audience
we have and don't resent them.
We're passionate enough about that.
But it has to be a big enough audience.
It has to be a big enough audience, frankly,
to satisfy our ego so that we get enough views
and subscribers from it.
We also need that audience to be big enough for us
to be able to potentially monetize, whether
that's monetizing them directly
or relying on advertisers and sponsors.
So you have to balance those four things.
That's called Ikigai. It's a Japanese philosophy.
I've talked about it here on the channel before,
but Ikigai is the secret to success as a content creator
because you need something you're just
passionate enough about.
It doesn't have to be your number one passion.
Just has to be something you will not get bored with so
that you don't make your audience suffer by code,
switching on them every minute
and changing niches every minute.
When you get bored,
your boredom isn't the audience's
problem, put the audience first.
So align with like-minded people
that you actually like and are passionate about.
That audience has to be big enough to satisfy your ego
and for you to be able to make money
and profit and monetize.
And you also have to develop the skills
or have them already to deliver value
and quality to that audience.
This is exactly what you need to know starting out
as a new YouTuber who wants to grow.
And this content and this information will still be good in
20 25, 20 26, 20 27
'cause this is the foundation, a building,
a successful YouTube channel.
If you want more advice on building a successful
and profitable YouTube channel,
click the link in the description down below.
I've made a dedicated video on it.
Stay awesome and I will catch you in the next video.
Take care.